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Friday, 18 November 2016

The Emma Press Newsletter #36: Fingers crossed!

Hello everyone,

I'm proud to say that the Emma Press has been shortlisted in the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet Awards for the third year in a row. Not only that, but we've got a pamphlet in the running for the very first time: Malkin, by Camille Ralphs. You can read the judges' comments over on the Wordsworth Trust website and see all the other estimable publishers and pamphlets in the shortlists. The results will be announced at the awards dinner at the British Library on 13th December – wish us luck!

There's lots more good news in this newsletter, so read on to find out about our latest anthology, our new pamphlet authors, some general book news and dates for your diary, and our call for animal poems.

Editor Eve Lacey has assembled a truly excellent selection of poems and we were lucky enough to see some of the poets perform at the launch party in King's Cross. You can see some photos here.

You can read more about The Emma Press Anthology of the Seahere and buy the paperback (£10) in our webshop. I will do the ebook soon too, I promise. Excitingly, we've already had our first review, on the LiteratureWorks website.

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Meet our twelve new pamphlet authors

We're finally able to announce our new pamphlet authors, chosen from last year's call for submissions. And they are... Andrew Wynn Owen, Emma Simon, Jack Nicholls, Leanne Radojkovich, Jan Carson, Padraig Regan, Zosia Kuczyńska, Carol Rumens, Rakhshan Rizwan, Simon Turner, Julia Bird and Malachi O’Doherty. 2017 will be a great year, for pamphlets, at least! You can read more about the authors here.

Latvian success

A couple of newsletters ago, I mentioned that I was trying to understand foreign rights deals and translation funding bids. I'm happy to inform you that my deals and bids were successful and we'll be publishing two Latvian translations next year: The Noisy Classrom (Skaļā klase), a collection of children’s poems by Ieva Samauska, illustrated by Vivianna Maria Staņislavska, and The Secret Box, three stories from Pirmā reize, a collection of short stories for adults by Daina Tabūna. You can read more about it on the actual Bookseller and you can read about the 'Support for Foreign Publisher Publishing Latvian Literature' programme here. You can also read about it in Russian here.

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General book news: Mums and Moons

Some of you may have noticed that The Emma Press Anthology of Motherhood has been out of print for a while. This is because I wanted to update the cover design and illustrations, as our house style has changed a bit since 2014. This time, I've done five new drawings, which you can preview here – and you can see the new cover design to the left. The books have just come back from the printer and you can order your copies here.

Some poems from Kate Wakeling's collection of poems for children, Moon Juice, have been set to music by composer Frances Cheryl-Hoad and were performed at Oxford Lieder Festival a couple of weeks ago. Rachel and I went along and we were completely blown away by it. Seeing all the reactions of the audience made me think that Moon Juice should be recommended for the Ted Hughes Award, as it really is an outstanding piece of work. Wink.

Kate went into BBC Radio Oxfordshire ahead of the concert, to talk about her poems and read a couple out loud. You can listen to her interview here, from 1.07.10.

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Dates for the diary: competitions, courses & events

* Fri 2nd-Sun 4th December, BIRMINGHAM. You may have spotted that I'm keeping it very local this winter, as a treat to myself. But why leave Birmingham, when there's so much good stuff on? I'm especially looking forward to having a stall at this: the Winter Makers Market in the old Municipal Bank building. Details here.

* Mon 5th Dec. Women writers are invited to send their poetry and prose on the subject of 'Guilt' to Mslexia by 5th December. Winning entries will be published in their March 2017 issue. Details here.

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SUBMISSIONS UPDATE

Open calls for submissions

* There's just over 2 weeks left to send us your POEMS ABOUT ANIMALS, for The Emma Press Bestiary, an adults' anthology which will be guest-edited by Anja Konig and Liane Strauss. You can read the press release here and the guidelines here. The deadline is Sunday 4th December 2016.

Closed calls for submissions

* Our call for poems about British and Irish KINGS AND QUEENS closed on 13th November and we are no longer accepting entries. I'll let you know an ETA for responses in the December newsletter.

* Our call for LOVE POEMS ended on 10th April and we have now sent out all the responses to everyone who submitted. If you can't find a response, even in your spam folder, let me know and I'll forward the email on to you again!

* Our call for poems for THE EMMA PRESS ANTHOLOGY OF AUNTS ended on 29th May and we are no longer accepting entries. The current ETA for responses is the end of November 2016.

This is a complete update on all of our calls for submissions, and we do send responses to everyone's submissions individually. In the meantime, just keep an eye on our newsletters for news of our progress and read our blog to find out what we do when we process submissions.

And finally...

* There's a new writing magazine brewing over in Belfast: The Tangerine. Read all about it in the Irish Times and check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

* I hope everyone who went had a nice time at Poetry in Aldeburgh last weekend! The poet-in-residence Ben Rogers diligently did about a million interviews, including ones with Jacqueline Saphra, Emily Berry and Geraldine Clarkson. Get this man in residence in more places!

* 'These are poems how I like them to be' – Nadia Kingsley from Fairacre Press has written a lovely piece about Deborah Alma's pamphlet True Tales of the Countryside. You can read it here.

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That's all for now. Do forward this newsletter onto your friends if you think they might enjoy it, or encourage them to sign up themselves here.